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I'm a big believer in the benefits of listening to non-magicians talk about magic to other non-magicians. I think they speak a lot more candidly. If you can ever get someone to talk about magic before they know you do it, it can be very enlightening. At the very least it's much more worthwhile than listening to other magicians jabber on about magic. That echo chamber produces logic like, "If you're a good magician, people don't want to look closely at your props because they think you're real." That's magicians talking to magicians about magicians. And magicians aren't known for the keen insight into the ways real people think.

This audio is of Tom Scharpling who hosts The Best Show—a weekly, three-hour, radio show turned podcast—as he talks for 21 minutes about going to see the Criss Angel show in Vegas (the story doesn't end there, if you listen to more of the show you'll hear about the next night when he goes to a benefit show put on by Criss Angel which sounds insane). I think it's rare to hear a non-magician talk about a magic show for that long, and I think there are a couple good insights into how a layperson perceives certain effects, and there are some good laughs too. If you've got some time to kill, give it a listen.

"His style is like a dude who saw a Nine Inch Nails video and then saw the movie The Crow, and he's like 'Yeah, that's everything I need right there. Got it.'"

And if you're not familiar with The Best Show, here is one of the classic moments from the show as Tom Scharpling and Paul F. Tompkins discuss the upcoming Gathering of the Juggalos in 2009.